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RHEL 6 : kernel-rt (RHSA-2018:2396)

medium Nessus Plugin ID 111775

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Synopsis

The remote Red Hat host is missing one or more security updates for kernel-rt.

Description

The remote Redhat Enterprise Linux 6 host has packages installed that are affected by multiple vulnerabilities as referenced in the RHSA-2018:2396 advisory.

 The kernel-rt packages provide the Real Time Linux Kernel, which enables fine-tuning for systems with extremely high determinism requirements.

 Security Fix(es):

 * Modern operating systems implement virtualization of physical memory to efficiently use available system resources and provide inter-domain protection through access control and isolation. The L1TF issue was found in the way the x86 microprocessor designs have implemented speculative execution of instructions (a commonly used performance optimisation) in combination with handling of page-faults caused by terminated virtual to physical address resolving process. As a result, an unprivileged attacker could use this flaw to read privileged memory of the kernel or other processes and/or cross guest/host boundaries to read host memory by conducting targeted cache side-channel attacks. (CVE-2018-3620, CVE-2018-3646)

 * An industry-wide issue was found in the way many modern microprocessor designs have implemented speculative execution of Load & Store instructions (a commonly used performance optimization). It relies on the presence of a precisely-defined instruction sequence in the privileged code as well as the fact that memory read from address to which a recent memory write has occurred may see an older value and subsequently cause an update into the microprocessor's data cache even for speculatively executed instructions that never actually commit (retire). As a result, an unprivileged attacker could use this flaw to read privileged memory by conducting targeted cache side-channel attacks. (CVE-2018-3639)

 Red Hat would like to thank Intel OSSIRT (Intel.com) for reporting CVE-2018-3620 and CVE-2018-3646 and Ken Johnson (Microsoft Security Response Center) and Jann Horn (Google Project Zero) for reporting CVE-2018-3639.

 Bug Fix(es):

 * The kernel-rt packages have been upgraded to the 3.10.0-693.37.1 source tree, which provides a number of bug fixes over the previous version. (BZ#1599860)

Tenable has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Red Hat Enterprise Linux security advisory.

Note that Nessus has not tested for these issues but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

Solution

Update the RHEL kernel-rt package based on the guidance in RHSA-2018:2396.

See Also

http://www.nessus.org/u?8a12e932

https://access.redhat.com/security/vulnerabilities/L1TF

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1566890

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1585005

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1599860

https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2018:2396

https://access.redhat.com/security/updates/classification/#important

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 111775

File Name: redhat-RHSA-2018-2396.nasl

Version: 1.14

Type: local

Agent: unix

Published: 8/16/2018

Updated: 3/26/2025

Supported Sensors: Frictionless Assessment AWS, Frictionless Assessment Azure, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Nessus Agent, Agentless Assessment, Continuous Assessment, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 6.7

Vendor

Vendor Severity: Important

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 4.7

Temporal Score: 3.7

Vector: CVSS2#AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:N/A:N

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2018-3646

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 5.6

Temporal Score: 5.1

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:N/A:N

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:P/RL:O/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-rt, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-rt-debug-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-rt-devel, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:6, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-rt-trace-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-rt-vanilla-devel, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-rt-firmware, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-rt-trace, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-rt-debug, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-rt-doc, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:kernel-rt-vanilla

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/RedHat/release, Host/RedHat/rpm-list, Host/cpu

Exploit Available: true

Exploit Ease: Exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 8/14/2018

Vulnerability Publication Date: 5/22/2018

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2018-3620, CVE-2018-3639, CVE-2018-3646

CWE: 200

RHSA: 2018:2396